How Star Wars: The Force Awakens Brought BB-8 to Life

According to a write-up on StarWars.com, it all started with director J.J. Abrams sketching a rough idea of what the droid needed to look like on a napkin. Once the original idea was out there, it was then sent off to Concept Designer Christian Alzmann.

While working on the concept of BB-8, Alzmann claims he was partially inspired by soccer balls for BB-8's design.

“I looked at a lot of soccer balls,” Alzmann said. “When you’re on a project like that, you start looking at everything spherical for inspiration. I think I ran across a soccer ball, and I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of perfect.’”

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Once the concept was finalized, the crew decided they wanted the new Astromech droid to be a practical effect rather than digital. To do this, they pulled in The Force Awakens' Creature Shop head Neal Scanlon. Scanlon, whose previous work includes Babe and Prometheus, concluded that the technology for spherical robots like BB-8 didn't exist in a satisfying enough state to make a creature that would mesh with the Star Wars universe. So, instead of trying to find advanced technology that didn't quite exist, Scanlon decided the best course of action was to create several versions of BB-8 instead.

Senior animatronic designer Joshua Lee then began working on a prototype BB-8 droid. The initial version was a puppet built from polystyrene, which Lee and Scanlon figured could be controlled by puppeteers.

That's when both Dave Chapman and Brian Herring took over with BB-8, working with the small droid for two weeks to master its expressive qualities. The puppeteer duo eventually had BB-8's movement down to a satisfactory point for Abrams, whose seal of approval led to the use of a puppet BB-8 in many of the scenes. Once this was approved, several other BB-8 versions were made, each with their own specific abilities best-suited to the different actions and camera shots that would be demanded of the character.

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Eventually, Lee went back and created a version of BB-8 that could move freely on its own while also capturing the mannerisms of the Astromech newcomer. It was this version that allowed the department to show fans how they planned to implement practical effects in the new film.

All of the creators involved are proud of the work they've done on the droid, with the two puppeteers expressing how controlling BB-8 has been the opportunity of a lifetime.

“I hope that he can sit with the really great, memorable Star Wars characters,” Herring said of the BB-8 character. “You know, you can look at him and R2-D2 and Chewbacca and go, ‘Oh, they’re all from the same place, and they all took part in the same story.’”